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Here we investigated the effects of three types of microplastics (MPs), i.e., PS (P), ABS (B), PVC (V), and each with additive (MPAs) (PA, BA, and VA), on soil health, microbial community, and plant growth in two acidic and slightly alkaline soils. Incubation experiment revealed that although MPs and MPAs consistently stimulated soil nutrients and heavy metals (e.g., Mn, Cu) in weakly alkaline soils, only BA and VA led to increase in soil nutrients and heavy metals in acidic soils. This suggests distinct response patterns in the two soils depending on their initial pH. Concerning microorganisms, MPs and MPAs reduced the assembly degree of bacteria in acidic soils, with a reduction of Chloroflexi and Acidobacteriota but an increase of WPS-2 in VA. Culture experiment showed consistent positive or negative responses in radish seed germination, roots, and antioxidant activity across MPs and MPAs types in both soils, while the responses of seed heavy metals (e.g., Cr, Cd) were consistent in acidic soils but dependent on MPs and MPAs types in alkaline soils. Therefore, our study strongly suggests that the effects of MPs on soil-microbial-plant systems were highly dependent on initial soil characteristics and the types of MPs with plastic additives., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

Endometritis is a significant contributor to reduced productivity in yaks in Tibet, China. The Cyt-c/Caspase-3 signaling axis plays a crucial role in the mitochondrial pathway that triggers cell apoptosis due to endogenous factors. In this study, we examined the endometrial epithelial tissue of yaks with endometritis using pathological examination, immunohistochemical analysis, TUNEL staining, qRT-PCR, and Western blot. The results indicated significant changes in the apoptotic factors of the Cyt-c/Caspase-3 signaling axis. The expression levels of Bak1, Bax, Cyt-c, Apaf-1, Caspase-9, and Caspase-3 were significantly increased (P < 0.05), while the expression level of Bcl-2 was significantly decreased. Immunohistochemistry results revealed significant increase in Bak1, Bax, Cyt-c, Apaf-1, Caspase-9, and Caspase-3 expression in the cytoplasm compared to the healthy group, except for Bcl-2, which showed a significant decrease. Pathological section analysis demonstrated that clinical endometritis in yaks led to structural damage, bleeding, congestion, and inflammatory cell infiltration in the endometrial epithelium. Our study findings indicated that clinical endometritis in yaks can modulate apoptosis of endometrial epithelial cells via the Cyt-c/Caspase-3 signaling pathway, resulting in different levels of damage. This research is pioneering in exploring cell apoptosis induced by clinical endometritis in yaks, offering novel insights and potential strategies for the future prevention and treatment of endometritis in yaks., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2023. Published by Elsevier Ltd.)

Background: The patterns of patients' cognitive function after hospital discharge for heart failure (HF), their prognostic implication and the predictors for new-onset cognitive impairment remain unknown., Methods and Results: We included 2307 patients (64 ± 14 years, 36.4% female sex) hospitalized for HF from a cohort who completed cognitive testing before discharge and after 1 month. Among 1658 patients with normal cognition before discharge, 229 (13.8%) and 1429 (86.2%) had new-onset cognitive impairment and normal cognition at 1 month, respectively. Of the 649 with cognitive impairment, 315 (48.5%) and 334 (51.5%) had transient and persistent cognitive impairment, respectively. Multivariable analyses showed that, compared with normal cognition, patients with new-onset cognitive impairment had an increased risk of cardiovascular death or HF rehospitalization (hazard ratio 1.35, 95% confidence interval 1.07-1.70); patients with persistent cognitive impairment showed an increased risk, but it was not statistically significant (hazard ratio 1.17, 95% confidence interval 0.95-1.44); patients with transient cognitive impairment had a similar risk (hazard ratio 0.91, 95% confidence interval 0.73-1.13). Older age, females, lower education level, prior atherosclerotic cardiovascular diseases, lower health status, and lower Mini-Cog score before discharge predicted new-onset cognitive impairment., Conclusions: Acute HF substantially affects short-term cognition. Patients who have developed new-onset cognitive impairment have an increased risk of adverse outcomes. Monitoring cognition is necessary, particularly in high-risk patients., Competing Interests: Conflict of interest statement Dr. Li reports receiving research grants, through Fuwai Hospital, from the Chinese government and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences for work to improve the management of hypertension and blood lipids and to improve patient outcomes of cardiovascular disease and COVID-19; receiving research agreements, through the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases and Fuwai Hospital; from Amgen for a multicenter clinical trial assessing the efficacy and safety of omecamtiv mecarbil and for dyslipidemic patient registration; receiving a research agreement, through Fuwai Hospital, from Sanofi for a multicenter clinical trial on the effects of sotagliflozin; receiving a research agreement, through Fuwai Hospital, with the University of Oxford for a multicenter clinical trial of empagliflozin; receiving a research agreement, through the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, from AstraZeneca for clinical research methods training outside the submitted work; and receiving a research agreement, through the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, from Lilly for physician training outside the submitted work. No other disclosures were reported., (Copyright © 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)

Pyrolysis is considered as a promising method to immobilize potentially toxic elements (PTEs) in animal manures. However, comparative study on characteristics and environmental risk of PTEs in biochar obtained by pyrolysis of animal manure at different reactors are lacking. In this study, swine manure was pyrolyzed at 300-600 °C in a lab-scale or pilot-scale reactor with the aim to investigate their effects on characteristics and environmental risk of As, Cd, Cu, Ni, Pb, and Zn in swine manure biochar. Results showed that biochars produced from pilot scale had lower pH and carbon (C) content but higher oxygen (O) content than those from lab scale. Biochars from pilot scale had higher total PTEs (except Cd) concentrations and releasable PTEs (except Pb) but lower CaCl 2 -extractable PTEs and phytotoxicity germination index (GI) to radish seedings than those from lab scale. Chemical speciation analysis indicated that PTEs in biochar produced from pilot-scale fast pyrolysis at 400 °C had higher percentage of more stable fraction (F5 fraction) and lower potential ecological risk index (RI) than those from lab-scale slow pyrolysis. These findings demonstrated that bioavailability and potential ecological risk of PTE in swine manure biochar were greatly decrease in the pilot-scale pyrolysis reactor and the optimum temperature was 400 °C considering the lowest potential ecological risk index., Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2022. Published by Elsevier B.V.)

Little attention has been paid to the combined effects of arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM) fungus and composted manure on heavy metal bioavailability and its uptake by plants grown in heavy metal-contaminated soils from electronic-waste (e-waste) recycling sites. A greenhouse pot experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of AM fungus, composted pig manure (CM) and AM fungus + CM (ACM) on the growth of ryegrass and uptake of Cd and Zn in the soil collected from an e-waste recycling site. The calcium chloride (CaCl 2 ) and Tessier sequential extraction procedure were adopted to evaluate the bioavailability and chemical speciation of Cd and Zn in the soil. Results showed that the application of CM and ACM significantly increased the pH but decreased the CaCl 2 -extractable Cd and Zn concentrations in the rhizosphere and bulk soils. ACM treatment significantly shifted Cd from exchangeable fraction to other more stable fractions, and transformed the exchangeable Zn fraction to the carbonate-bound and reducible iron and manganese-bound fractions. Furthermore, the application of ACM can enhance the growth of plant shoots, and decrease the uptake of Cd and Zn in the ryegrass plants. This work suggests that AM fungus in combination with CM amendment may be a potential method for not only remediation of soil Cd and Zn pollution, but also reduction of Cd and Zn uptake by ryegrass grown in the soil from e-waste recycling sites.

Surface hopping quantum mechanical/molecular dynamics simulations have been performed for the tetracyanoethylene-anthracene complex to investigate the evolution of charge-transfer (CT) states after excitation into a locally excited (LE) state of anthracene. The scaled opposite-spin (SOS) second-order algebraic diagrammatic construction (SOS-ADC(2)) has been used to achieve a balanced description of LE and CT states. The calculations have been performed for two media, the gas phase and water (described by molecular mechanics, MM). The two dynamics variants show strongly different behaviors. Even though in both cases the conversion from the LE state to lower-lying CT states occurs with 100 fs, in the gas phase, the system remains in the excited state for longer than 2 ps, while in water, it returns to the ground state within 0.5 ps. Moreover, while in the gas phase the original neutral equilibrium structure should be recovered, in water, the ion-pair (IPr) CT state is strongly stabilized, creating a new competing ground-state isomer. Thus, we predict that the ground state of the complex in water should be composed of two species, the original neutral state and an IPr state. The existence of an IPr ground state in strongly polar environments opens interesting possibilities for the design of efficient charge-separating organic donor-acceptor interfaces.

This study combined electro-oxidation (EO) and electrocoagulation (EC) process (EO/EC) to treat landfill leachate by using RuO 2 -IrO 2 /Ti plate and microscale zero-valent iron powder composite anode. EO was achieved by direct oxidation and indirect oxidation on RuO 2 -IrO 2 /Ti plate, whereas EC was achieved using iron powder to lose electrons and produce coagulants in situ. The influences of variables including type of anode material, applied voltage, zero-valent iron dosage, interelectrode gap, and reaction temperature on EO/EC were evaluated. Results showed that at an applied voltage of 10 V, zero-valent iron dosage of 0.2 g, interelectrode gap of 1 cm, and non-temperature-controlled mode, the removal efficiencies were 72.5 % for total organic carbon (TOC), 98.5 % for ammonia, and 98.6 % for total phosphorus (TP). Some heavy metals and hardness were also removed. Further analysis indicated that the removal of TOC, ammonia, and TP followed pseudo-first order, pseudo-zero order, and pseudo-second order kinetic models, respectively. Other characteristics were examined by scanning electron microscopy-energy dispersive spectrometry, X-ray diffraction, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. Overall, our results showed that EO/EC can be used to efficiently remove organic matter, ammonia, TP, and heavy metals from landfill leachate., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest No., (Copyright © 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The migration of endothelial cells (ECs) is closely associated with a Ca 2+ -dependent protein, protein kinase Cα (PKCα). The disruption of intercellular adhesion by single-cell wounding has been shown to induce the directional translocation of PKCα. We hypothesized that this translocation of PKCα is induced by mechanical stress, such as unloading of intercellular tension, or by intercellular communication, such as gap junction-mediated and paracrine signaling. In the current study, we found that the disruption of intercellular adhesion induced the directional translocation of PKCα even when gap junction-mediated and paracrine signaling were inhibited. Conversely, it did not occur when the mechanosensitive channel was inhibited. In addition, the strain field of substrate attributable to the disruption of intercellular adhesion tended to be larger at the areas corresponding with PKCα translocation. Recently, we found that a direct mechanical stimulus induced the accumulation of PKCα at the stimulus area, involving Ca 2+ influx from extracellular space. These results indicated that the unloading of intercellular tension induced directional translocation of PKCα, which required Ca 2+ influx from extracellular space. The results of this study indicate the involvement of PKCα in the Ca 2+ signaling pathway in response to mechanical stress in ECs., (© 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.)

The first case of selective Fe(3+) ions and 1,4-dioxane luminescent sensor based on a porous organic polymer, POP-HT, was synthesized by reaction of tetra(p-aminophenyl)methane and chromophoric 2,5,8-trichloro-s-heptazine. POP-HT displayed prominent fluorescence quenching or enhancement in the presence of Fe(3+) ion or 1,4-dioxane. Moreover, an excellent linear relationship was established between luminescent intensity and the corresponding Fe(3+) ion or 1,4-dioxane concentration. The mechanisms of luminescence quenching and enhancement were also studied by both experiment and theoretical calculation. The results of this study suggest that POP-HT can work as an effective luminescent indicator for qualitative and quantitative detection of Fe(3+) ions and 1,4-dioxane in aqueous solution over other metal ions and organic solvents.